Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Previously, On Doctor Who...

"A man is the sum of his memories, even more so for a Time Lord," said the Doctor in The Five Doctors. Or something like that. It was the 20th Anniversary Special, it was ages ago and I can't be expected to remember it exactly. The point is, Doctor Who, like many a resurrected cult classic, is the sum of memories - yours and mine - and it's the impressions that stick in your mind that characterise your favourite show(s). I know I mentioned before that in the run up to the New Series there was talk of how this one wasn't going to be all wobbly sets and men in suits like the old series, and the fact is, that wasn't what I remembered about 'classic' Doctor Who at all. I don't even remember a lot of model spaceships, even though I know the series featured them as a cheaper alternative to the real thing. It's only when we get to stories like 'Underworld' that things like dodgy CSO start to leave a lasting impression. I'd have to check what year that was, but my guess is I was beginning to grow up. By the time I'd reached 'Horns of Nimon' I'd achieved such a mature level of discernment I could tell it was, frankly, rubbish.

Ah, how often have I sat down to watch an old favourite episode with a slight sense of trepidation, wondering if it will be as good as I remember. (Strangely, I never stop to wonder if ‘Nimon’ was *better* than I remember.) That was back when they were on UK Gold though and when I was collecting them avidly on VHS, when I was seeing them for the second time for the first time, as it were. These days, I'm past that and although I'm selective when it comes to which episodes I'll buy on DVD, I'm selecting those ones for a reason: and that is, whatever their deficiencies in the fx department and so on, they are, in a word, magic. They're not exactly as I remember them - of course they're not, because the wonky bits were always filled in by my childhood imagination - but they tap into that. If you’re susceptible to their charm, then the illusion holds together.

So what of this new big budget version of our old favourite, where the fx are at least (we’d hope) a foregone conclusion and the illusion is by and large all done for you? Setting that aside though, I believe good Doctor Who is born of the same rules and the same essential ingredients – whatever they are J - regardless of budget. On the one hand, this version had a lot to live up to, on the other, we all wanted to love it so it had a lot of positive karma in its bank balance to begin with.

Clealry, the show was a popular success - and an almost instant one at that. It could be argued that if you plugged anything sporting a natty Doctor Who label into the vacuum that was Saturday night TV by that stage, you were going to attract viewers, but the main trick isn't attracting viewers, it's keeping them. And the show did that, all the way through. It's a talking point of conversation amongst ordinary non-Doctor Who people. And there's a sense of anticipation and interest in the series from people who previously showed no interest whatsoever - like both of my sisters, and the BBC for instance. As to its success at being Doctor Who, well, the only way I have to measure that is by the little cold shivers I experienced when watching it, and the enduring quality of those impressions.

Obviously, I'm not a kid any more and am, sadly, far less impressionable, so it's difficult to leave me with such indelible images as the Sea Devils rising out of the ocean that will last a lifetime. But given that I’ve not yet rewatched more than one episode since the series’ first run, this is more about what has stayed with me for the intervening months.

Since I’ve already covered the episodes individually, it’s reasonably safe to say that my opinion hasn’t changed a great deal with regard to any of them. (For my initial impressions of each story, comb through the archives!) The good bits endure: the tingle when Rose enters the TARDIS for the first time, the thrill of seeing the Dalek doing all the things I already knew Daleks could do but had not yet seen on screen, the sheer creepy joy of ‘The Empty Child’. The niggles still niggle: the prolonged inaction finale of ‘Rose’, the ‘Galaxy Quest’ climax of ‘The End Of The World’, the transparent twist of ‘The Unquiet Dead’. And the sucky parts still suck: Mickey’s plastic grin in ‘Rose’, the two-part fart gag that was ‘Aliens of London’ and ‘World War Three’, and the, er, wasted opportunity of ‘Boomtown’. And in the midst of all that, the least memorable episode of the lot was ‘The Long Game’, which has the dubious privilege of being too average to stick in the mind for any special reason. A rewatch may alter some of that, but for the most part time and reflection have made little difference.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now confirm that the Doctor’s passive nature was down to his being scarred by the Time War and all that jazz, and as a thread linking the series it works. It’s a bold experiment that succeeds on that level, but still, for me, leaves the shadow of a disappointing Doctor. (Also, I got that he was something of a depressed Doctor, but did he have to be so bi-polar in his opinions: everything either "Stupid!" or "Fantastic!" - but I may well have said enough on that in previous posts!) It might have worked better had Christopher Eccleston continued in the role, allowing his Doctor to recover and reassert his own strengths, or had we been treated to a season beforehand in which we saw his Doctor being, well, more of a Doctor. Because with hindsight I appreciate more fully that he was, in fact, brilliant in the role – there are far too many moments where he shines to think otherwise: gloating over the Dalek, being gloated over by the Dalek, the ‘chips’ scene from ‘End of the World’, and his holographic farewell to Rose in ‘Parting of the Ways’, all real oh-my-god Doctor moments that will live in the memory for some time. But the unfortunate conjunction of character concept and premature regeneration mean we will never get to see him as anything but an essentially weak Doctor. And the whole of the first series is littered with ineffectual endings where we are forced to wonder about the fate of the world if it weren’t for the ‘lucky’ happenstance of the occasional deus ex machina (‘Boomtown’, ‘The Parting of the Ways’), or a plot built like a three-piece jigsaw so that it pretty much solves itself (‘The Unquiet Dead’). It’s a shame, but I hope that when I do get to rewatch some of the episodes, I get to appreciate the performance more in context than I might just be left wondering what might have been. And not wincing too much every time he says "Fantastic!".

I wonder if this idea of the Doctor was born out of some need to bring him down to the level of the companion. If so, I can only think the best way to go would have been to strengthen the companion – and as things turned out, the fact is, they wouldn’t have needed to at all. What worked far more successfully, for me, was Rose’s journey. Piper is terrific as Rose. That’s the plain and simple truth. She’ll never have the same place of affection in my heart as some of the previous companions (no, not Mel or Adric), but that’s much more a fault of my age than her performance in the role or the writing. For fear of making her seem weak next to the Doctor, they may have overcompensated. She’s wide-eyed enough to marvel at the things that need to be marveled at, conveying the sense of wonder you’d expect when whisked off in the TARDIS. She’s tough and independent in her way, and they even allow her to be helpless from time to time without undermining her strengths. I personally still don’t get that whole Bad Wolf business, and frankly the series and the character could have done perfectly well without it, but Rose in and of herself was great. In her way, she may even prove more memorable than the Doctor.

And she was of course very down to Earth. Which has its unfortunate side effects on the series, firstly in that she comes with baggage in the form of a mother and a boyfriend – both of which, I’m sorry, still irritate now that they’re just memories rather than cropping up every second episode (not helped by the knowledge that they’re set to come back). And secondly, in that the TARDIS just couldn’t get away from the place: the furthest it managed was a presumably fairly high Earth orbit. It shows a lack of adventure and a certain ‘safe’ attitude to the series that I don’t think did it any favours. Even my sisters who had been won over to Doctor Who for the first time in their lives were beginning to get really fed up with it by ‘The Empty Child’, and it’s a shame if their enjoyment of that story was only spoiled, even moderately, by the fact that it was couched between so many other Earth-based adventures. I’m all for touching base, but if you do it too often you’ll never get anywhere and as successful as ‘Aliens of London’ was (yes, it did have its very good points too) in exploring the effects of Rose having ‘been away’, I can’t help thinking that would have been helped by the still greater contrast of some truly alien worlds.

Then there’s Jack, of course. Or Cap’n Jack as he seems to have become known. Personally, I thought he was great, livening up the screen when he was on, always entertaining – except in ‘Boomtown’ when he was shoved into the scenery – and a good ‘action man’ time traveller to contrast with the Doctor. But as fond as I was of the character, I do wonder now if he will prove all that memorable, especially in the light of his woeful resurrection. Of course he’s being brought back in the BBC’s Torchwood spin-off, but in the context of Doctor Who, he may have proven more long-lived if he’d been allowed to stay dead.

Then there was, um... Adam. Yes. Well. What was that about? I really hope he is revealed as the new father of the Cybermen or something, because otherwise I will always be left wondering whether there was any point to him at all.

But here I’ve been banging on about this and that and I’ve not even touched on the memorable monsters. Um… well, there were the Daleks. Honestly, now that I turn my mind to the subject, it’s the Daleks that stand out in the memory, heads and, er, shoulders above the rest. That’s down to the imagery we were treated to, the way they were allowed to show off for us, as much as the fact that it’s the Daleks. And the credit is shared surprisingly equally between ‘Dalek’ and the less satisfactory overall ‘The Parting of the Ways’. Probably because we got to see billions of the things streaming out of their spaceships – and thankfully that truly awe-inspiring scene does much to gloss over the less fortunate way in which they pootled around the space station, waiting to get shot at. The ones that rise into view to take care of Lynda with a ‘y’ or ‘i’ – I can’t remember which! – are responsible for one of the great moments, almost – almost – up there with the Sea Devils surfacing through the waves and wading ashore.

But if I trawl through my recollections for other memorable monsters, unfortunately I keep coming up with the Slitheen – and for all the wrong reasons. They are too much like the Tetraps of the new series or, dare I say, the Nimon. They just don’t – work, for me. Maybe it’s the big baby eyes, maybe it’s the all too visible contrast between the lumbering man in the suit version and the CGI counterpart, maybe it’s the farcical or just plain lacking nature of the stories that featured them. They’re just poor, and like Jackie and Mickey, all the worse for the fact that you just know they’re engineered to be a returning, er, menace.

As for the rest, Cassandra will probably stick in the minds of most kids, and perhaps the eructating wheelie bin, but my money is not on the Nestene or the thing stuck to the ceiling in The Long Game. For sheer creepiness and exquisite simplicity, the best vote goes to the kid in a gas mask in ‘The Empty Child’. Not really a monster, but definitely the stuff of nightmares. And that really does equate with the Sea Devils, Giant Maggots, the Wirrn grub and Uncle Tom Cobley and all that Doctor Who has managed to throw at us nervous, impressionable types in the past.

Overall then, like the original ‘classic’ series, the end result is better than the sum of its parts. We forgive its flaws and embrace it warts and all, because the good bits are really so good and there is still nothing else like it on TV. As is evidenced even in individual episodes, in that ‘The Unquiet Dead’, for all its 45-minute flimsiness, remains one of my favourites. But you see, where it may share some of the flaws of other episodes, it has all the character, atmosphere and just general Doctor Who-ness anyone could wish for and was the first episode in which I knew for a hundred percent certainty that I was watching Doctor Who. For every cloud, there’s a silver lining and in the case of Doctor Who probably several. One of the measures of the series’ success, ironically, is that it leaves far too much to actually discuss than I could ever cite here with any hope of anyone reading through it all.

So I’ll stop soon.

In short, I loved it. It’s a qualified love and will have to go some considerable way to promote that to the same unconditional love with which I embraced the show as a child. But from what I hear, many a kid has embraced this new series with just that same kind of affection, and really I suppose that was the main aim.

Old fans like us are secondary, but we’re glad that this young whipper snapper still has something to offer us. And there are plenty of memories that will stay with me, for all the right reasons, at least until I get a chance to watch the episodes again.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the Christmas Invasion with huge amounts of anticipation. In part because the design of monster for that one really looks the business. And in part because, in my days of running the Doctor Who roleplaying game, I came up with scary Santas yonks ago. Of course they were Autons and one of my player characters had great fun running one over repeatedly in a stolen police car, but that really is another story and almost certainly couldn’t compare with anything the new series can come up with.

And if the Queen mentions Doctor Who in her Christmas speech this year, we'll finally know the full extent of its popular success.

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About Me

Born in Penzance in 1967. From the age of about three I was probably dreaming of writing for Doctor Who. Certainly it wasn't a case of just watching it: I'd go to bed with all sorts of adventures and story possibilities buzzing around in my head. From the age of eleven, I knew, whenever any aunts and uncles asked the "What do you want to do when you grow up?" question, the stock replies of jet pilot, train driver, astronaut were never going to be good enough for me. "I want to be a writer", I always said. And, what do you know, I am.